Oceanside Schools Fall Reopening - Board Meeting Tomorrow!
Tomorrow, Oceanside Unified is holding a Board meeting which we were originally told would involve making a decision on final reopening plans.
Details on joining that meeting are below for all.
We understand that the Governor has closed our schools, that decision has been taken out of our hands, but we also understand that is temporary. Our schools will, at some point, be cleared to reopen.
We want our district to be ready.
To recap, this spring the District took a survey of parent preferences for our fall return. As the district said in their 6/23 meeting, "the response was amazing" and "over 4600 parents participated." Parent power!
In that survey, 53% of parents voted for a return to full-time in person "traditional" school this fall. That works out to about 2400 parents with that viewpoint.
As the district also pointed out in this meeting, "safety was a priority for all families", so the idea that has been brought out that those parents did not know what they were voting for is clearly incorrect.
A link to a recording of that meeting is here, for anyone interested in refreshing themselves on the details.
Despite it being the majority choice, the district presented no option for full-time return in their preliminary proposal.
In addition, we now have 628 parents who have signed this petition asking the district to do this.
That petition has been presented via email and was also discussed in comment to the board during the 7/14 meeting.
Despite all of this, the agenda for tomorrow night's meeting gives no indication this is going to even be discussed.
A copy of that agenda is here. We can see that item 6A is the only related item on the agenda, and all it says is “Staff will present information regarding the Governor’s mandate for districts on the state monitoring list to open with distance learning. San Diego County is on that monitoring list.”
To be as clear as possible here. NO one wants to return in any way that is unsafe – to either our kids or our teachers and staff.
No one.
The way to do that is to be prepared. Take advantage of the work that has been done by other districts and build from that.
We see Carlsbad, Cajon Valley, Poway Unified, and other districts have put together plans they feel follow CDC, State, and County guidelines and are safe for students and staff.
Why is Oceanside Unified not doing that as well?
There is a group of parents who, for some reason, are opposed to simply making a plan. We don't understand that but we respect their opinions.
We saw what happened when the district was forced to close this spring. Despite great efforts by our wonderful teachers, most parents would call what happened less than ideal.
We know schools will open sometime, we hope more sooner than later. Do we want the plans to get slapped together then? How safe could that be?
We need our voice to be as loud and clear as possible.
Please attend this meeting (via Zoom), details are below, but before that you can send an email to our Board members expressing your opinions.
Here is a list of Board Member emails for you.
mike.blessing@oside.us
stacy.begin@oside.us
Eleanor.Evans@oside.us
eric.joyce@oside.us
raquel.alvarez@oside..us
And our Superintendent - superintendent@oside.us
If you do choose to do this, you can also cc us at openoceansideschools2020@yahoo.com
If you’d like to speak at this meeting, instructions to sign up for that are below as well.
We greatly appreciate your support in this and will certainly keep you updated as things develop.
Tuesday, 7/21/20 at 6pm
Or join by phone:
Dial +1 669 900 9128
Webinar ID: 961 9920 1380#
Spanish Translation Call-in-line: 434-886-0086 PIN: 833 526 210#
The Spanish Translation Call-in line is for listening to the translation only. It is not a public comment line. For public comment information, please see below.
Public Comment Information:
Public comment form: bit.ly/ousd-07-21
Opportunity to give public comment and to submit this form for public comment will close 15 minutes prior to the start of the public meeting (6:00 pm).
Parents – make your voices heard!
And, if you are of the opinion that it would be possible to open schools safely, with the right plan in place to ensure safety of both kids and staff, you can join that group by emailing openoceansideschools2020@yahoo.com
And, of course, you can continue to follow this issue on our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/ousdparents